Trust and Relationships in Qualitative Research

On staying: Extended temporalities, relationships and practices in community engaged scholarship

“…Bennett and Brunner (2020) have expressed the need to reframe ‘non-research tasks’ as intrinsic to participatory research, and Palmer et al (2020) have sought to reconceptualise community-engaged scholarship as ‘spheres of engagement’ to account for the relational and temporal characteristics that necessarily precede and proceed delineated projects. As the practice of co-production becomes increasingly entwined with institutionally defined forms of ‘impact’, commentators have also acknowledged that the most valuable outcomes for communities can be ‘non-academic’, including the more instrumental investments of time and energy currently devalued within academic contexts (Costas Batlle and Carr, 2021; Evans, 2016; Pain et al, 2016; Williams et al, 2020). Staying, as I have documented it here, can afford the time and space (both literally and figuratively ) for such activities and commitments.…”

“…Such commitments should be understood as inherent to the ethics of participation and structured into institutional commitments to collaboration and knowledge exchange. Where the conditions of 'fast academia' (Costas Batlle and Carr, 2021) fail to accommodate time and space for such applied work, it is likely that currently valorised forms of collaboration will remain marginal and wider costs will be incurred in terms of quality, reciprocity and ethics.…”

“…Given the rising popularity of online research methods, sustained contact might also take place remotely in synchronous or asynchronous forms (Pink et al, 2016). Notwithstanding this, it is my contention that staying as concept and a practice warrants further methodological attention and particularly so within our increasingly time limited academic context with its growing emphasis on time intensive practices, like participatory research (Costas Batlle and Carr, 2021). Mountz et al (2015) have acknowledged the increasingly strained and time-pressured experience of social research.…”

“…Williams et al (2020) have examined the implications for participatory scholarship and Edwards (2020) has highlighted emerging practices of resistance performed, for instance, through the pursuit of unfunded research. Despite the essential nature of time spent forming relational qualities like trust in qualitative research, there is a reported concern that devotions of time towards that which fails to produce ‘measurable outputs’, might be viewed as time wasted within ‘fast academia’ (Costas Batlle and Carr, 2021). Situating itself within that field, this article offers two methodological contributions.…”

“…My experiences of staying support the widely held assertions that community engaged scholarship rests upon qualities of respect, reciprocity and trust (Kral, 2014). These qualities are distinctively temporal , in that they accumulate over time, through demonstrations of respectability, commitment and trustworthiness (Costas Batlle and Carr, 2021; Pidgeon, 2019). To achieve reciprocity participatory projects also need to be conceived in dialogical encounte rs, where community partners are able to set desired outcomes, parameters and goals; even if this means not doing things.…”